


up on heaven's boulevard

by dragonlisette



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 20:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11540046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonlisette/pseuds/dragonlisette
Summary: a meditation on nail polish, set March 2017.





	up on heaven's boulevard

**Author's Note:**

> [originally posted on tumblr.](http://cityofphanchester.tumblr.com/post/159661425575/up-on-heavens-boulevard)

The nail polish is buried in Dan’s bedside drawer, where every once in a while he can catch a glimpse of its dark sheen, stop and look and wonder. He’s only worn it the infamous once, very briefly and mostly on a whim, and while he’s relatively sure Phil wouldn’t laugh, he’s absolutely sure there isn’t any nail polish remover in the house, and they go out and go to meetings, and Phil’s always been the near edge of uncomfortable around femininity and does he even really want to paint his nails? Probably not, so why is it still going around his head? When did he get comfortable enough in his own skin to even consider it, and why didn’t he notice?

The week’s been busy in the way that feels more like drowning than being productive, and Dan’s head is a mess, and he knows it, and he keeps thinking about all the shadows of himself stretching back across the years. How they cared so much, and how he doesn’t. How they were so scared, and how he isn’t. How being anything other than some arbitrary fixed image of who and what he ought to be felt like the end of the world, and how now everything feels like an invitation to make that leap. He can’t decide whether his younger selves would be horrified or proud, and he doesn’t know why that bothers him so much.

It’s their night off to breathe, because even on weeks like these they guarantee themselves one, and Phil wants to watch a movie, some 90s action-adventure he’s scandalized that Dan’s never seen. Dan also wants to watch this movie, because not much steadies him out like getting lost in someone else’s plotline. He’ll go in a minute. He will. Just for a moment, he’s letting himself sit on the edge of his bed and roll the cool glass between his fingers and wonder.

There’s a bump and a squeak from the doorway, and Dan whirls around, hand and bottle slipping into his hoodie pocket. Phil’s there, rubbing his elbow, bobbing up and down a little with his face twisted up.

“Such a sneak,” Dan says, through the swell of panic in his throat. “How’d you pass ninja training school.”

“I don’t think I did,” Phil says, and he doesn’t seem to notice anything odd, so Dan relaxes his hand and removes it from the hoodie pocket, passing it off as a casual hair ruffle. The bottle is a weight against his stomach. “Weren’t we gonna – ”

“Yeah, yeah, we still are.” He can’t tell if he replied too quickly or not. Phil’s traded out contact lenses for glasses, jeans for too-short pajama pants, and he seems mostly worried about trying to contort his arm so he can see if his elbow’s bruising.

“Okay. Can you – like – ” He holds out his arm helplessly, and Dan has to laugh – “see?”

“It’s been thirty seconds, Phil. There’s no blood. I’ll let you know if your arm falls off.”

Phil sulks for a second and a half and then forgets about it. “Where’d you get the nail polish?”

“What?” His breath is short in his chest.

“When I came in, you had – you put it in your pocket. Or was I not supposed to see that. Oops. Rewind.” He does the sound effect and laughs a little and seems willing to forget about it if Dan wants.

“Tour.” His voice is a little rough; he clears his throat and tries again. “I got it on tour.”

“I thought you didn’t want to do anything like that on danisnotonfire.”

“I don’t.”

Phil looks at him, and for someone in Muppets pajamas, his gaze is altogether too piercing. Dan’s not at all sure how he ever got accustomed to being looked at like that. “Okay,” Phil says eventually, and then, “we’d better start the movie before it gets too late,” and then, turning away, “I’ll get it ready if you pop the popcorn.”

Dan stands, one hand on the drawer handle and one hand in his pocket, and then he doesn’t open the drawer. The thing about his conversations with Phil is that Phil’s always perfectly willing to let them last hours and days and weeks, spread out in tiny snippets with plenty of room in between for Dan to consider and change his mind. He presses, but never too much all at once. He won’t ask when Dan gets out there, and somehow that’s comfort enough. The bottle stays in his pocket.

The movie is good but not great, and Dan doesn’t much care because Phil’s warm and there’s a blanket over them and Phil’s shoulder is solid under his cheek. His hands are shoved into the hoodie pocket and his restless fingers keep twirling the nail polish round and round, until the glass heats up from his hands and he’s almost but not quite forgotten what it is. When the credits rolls, along with a rousing rendition of the original theme, his head feels appropriately lulled into calm.

“Mute it, Jesus,” he says, and Phil obliges.

“Experienced film reviewer professor Daniel Howell, go.”

Dan tilts his nose into Phil’s neck because he knows it’s cold, and smiles at the halfhearted wriggles away. “Not terrible. Very nineties. Two and a half stars.”

“I’m insulted,” Phil says, and he doesn’t really sound insulted. “You know it’s at least two and three-quarters.” There’s a pause, and a breath, and he says, quiet, “Do you want me to paint your nails?”

Another pause, another breath, and equally quiet, “Why?”

“Might be fun. You’d look good, I think.” And that’s even quieter, some new, tender part of Phil that’s only just now seeing the light of day. Something that wasn’t okay when Phil was young and now is okay, and Dan knows that he sees all of it on Twitter along with the cringy new slang. The words and the dance moves, those Phil can toss out with a laugh, but the rest of it, that’s a thirty-year-old man redefining in his head what  _okay_ and  _good_ are. Dan kisses his collarbone, so soft it’s barely there, and sits up.

“Okay. Yeah. Sure,” he says, and extracts a hand from the blankets to rake his fingers through the curls he’s still trying to figure out how he feels about, because okay, maybe he’s still sorting through some stuff too. “Go for it, bro.”

“Don’t call me  _bro_ , Dan,” Phil says, and they look at each other, each awash in a different flavor of insecurity, and Dan takes his other hand out of his pocket, bottle clenched in his fist.

“Just – don’t get it on the blanket, maybe?” Dan says, aware that his voice is a shade higher than usual. “You did art, I’m expecting great things.”

“I was rubbish, you know that,” Phil says, and the nervousness in the air disintegrates a little. Dan tucks the bottle into his hand and moves to sit cross-legged, tugging Phil to mirror him. The blanket falls away, and Dan shivers, splays his hands on his own knees. Phil fumbles with the cap and picks Dan’s left hand up, a gentle, featherlight touch, balancing Dan’s fingers in the space between them. Dan shivers again, this time because Phil’s got his sharp eyes going, narrowed and focused like he intends to burn through Dan’s hand.

The first stripe of black paint is slow and wobbly, and he goes back for the edges and gets mostly skin, and although he improves from nail to nail, the overall effect on that first hand is a bit shaky and smeared. It’s lovely. They’re lovely, and they catch the light, and Dan’s stomach is weak. He meets Phil’s eyes and smiles, feeling a bit hysterical. Phil’s still holding onto his hand like he isn’t sure what to do with it.

“Could’ve gone worse,” he says, with an uptilt at the end, and Dan tugs his hand back to shake the nails dry, to shake some of the hysterical feeling out.

“They’re incredible,” he says, and his voice fails him a little, and then he just says, “ _Phil_.”

“Okay,” Phil says, like he’s reassuring himself, and picks up Dan’s other hand. That one goes better, smoother and more even, and there’s a bubble pressing against Dan’s ribs so tight he can hardly get air in. This is Phil, Phil in glasses with his fringe falling over his eyes, Phil in pajamas with his too-long legs overhanging the sofa, Phil who’s looking down so seriously and painting Dan’s nails without a trace of irony. When he’s finished, Dan shakes that hand out too and holds them both out between them to admire. Matte black and messy, his aesthetic, but it’s not really that making his head swim. It’s that they’re pretty. They’re pretty, and they make him pretty, and Phil’s struggling to screw the cap back on, and the bubble escapes his lungs in something between a sob and a laugh.

“ _Phil_ ,” he says again, and Phil smiles kind of twisted up and sideways and uncertain.

“So you like it.”

“So I love it, oh my god. Also give that here.” Phil relinquishes the bottle, and Dan fixes the lid and slides it onto the coffee table. “Fuck, Phil, look at them.”

“It looks good on you,” Phil says, and it’s soft, but Dan knows he means it. “It’s nice. You look nice. I mean, you always look nice, but – ”

Dan shuts him up by kissing him soundly and then retrieves the space blanket from the floor so he can settle them back to where they were, curling tight into Phil’s side with his hands out in front of them. They’re still wet, they learn when Phil touches one, so he moves his fingers aimlessly to catch the light and just looks and looks again.

“I can do yours,” he says, just so it’s out there, but it’s not much of a surprise when Phil shakes his head.

“Not today,” he says, and maybe it means not today and maybe it means not ever, but it’s okay either way. Dan feels Phil’s cheek settle onto his hair, and it’s quiet, so quiet and so comfortable. All the sirens in the world couldn’t break into the little world they’ve made for themselves.

“You know,” Dan says slowly, long after their heartbeats have synched up, “we’ve got to do that meeting on Monday, so I’m gonna have to take them off, which means shopping list: nail polish remover – ”

“Assuming you don’t scratch them off in ten seconds tomorrow morning,” Phil says, which is a too-valid point tempered by the fact that he folds Dan’s hands between his as he makes it.

“Assuming that, but – Phil, we could go to, like, Primark? And – ”

“Pastels,” Phil says, and there’s a touch of a laugh in his voice. “Wholesome spring pastels, do you want me to text Louise?”

“I’m not joking.” His throat’s gone tight.

“Nor am I. Maybe the Louise part. But pink. You suit pink a lot more than you think you do. Or glitter. You could do glitter.”

“Ugh,” he says to hide the relief, because there’s no mocking in Phil’s tone, just amused affection. “I am only blackness, the prince of death, the nihilists are coming – ”

“We won’t tell the nihilists.”

It goes quiet again, and Dan revels in Phil’s soft breathing and the fact that tomorrow when he’s doing ten solid hours of editing he’ll be able to look down and see  _this_ against the keyboard. Eventually Phil tilts him upright, says, “even princes of death need sleep, yeah?” and Dan mutters something back and stands, and he can’t help staring at the lights off his nails as he reaches out to pull Phil to his feet too.


End file.
